SDNY COURTHOUSE, March 24 – Immediately after the Department of Homeland
Security's funding lapsed on February 14, DHS stopped
complying with an order to produce documents about
alternatives to detention in immigration
cases.
On March 24 the US Attorney's
Office for the Southern District of New York invoked the
political questions doctrine to defend the suspension of
FOIA document production. Inner City Press was there, the
only person in the courtroom gallery.
SDNY Judge Jesse M. Furman
called the political questions doctrine justification
"borderline sanctionable," and ordered the production that
had been due on February 27 to be made in two weeks, and
March's and April's combined production by the end of
April.
"I am doing my job," he said.
"The President and Congress should do there."
He noted that he is in the middle of
a trial - a civil trial Inner City Press is also covering
- but that he might otherwise write on the topic. Inner
City Press now has (done its job - covering the
courts).
The case is Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
v. US Department of Homeland Security, et al.,
1:25-cv-6541 (Furman)
